British universities need Grayling’s shake-up

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His college is a necessary disruption to complacent academics. We need more teaching and broader studies

Larry Summers was President of Harvard University before being appointed Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. Reflecting on his career, he remarked: “I was probably the first man in history who felt he was getting away from poisonous politics by going to Washington.”

Academics are famously adept at escalating minor intellectual distinctions into take-no-prisoners civil wars. Indeed, academic disputes are the classic example of what Sigmund Freud descibed as “the narcissism of small differences”.

The latest instance of this self- indulgence is the hysterical reaction of British academics to the proposal by A.